In the early morning hours of May 19, 2016, EgyptAir flight 804 approached the Egyptian coast near Alexandria. It was a routine flight until messages from the airplane’s automatic system, known as ACARS, indicated something was going wrong. Minutes later, the Airbus 320, carrying 66 people, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. There were no survivors.
Debris was located about 180 miles off the coast. A massive search found the wreckage in a 13,000-feet-deep of water. Fortunately, the cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder were recovered. The mystery of what caused the accident should have been solved by the data on those recorders. It wasn’t.
Initially, the Egyptian authorities suspected terrorism, but that did not explain the ACARS messages that indicated a potential fire on board. Months later, the authorities acknowledged the fire messages were valid and substantiated by the recorders. The radar track of the airliner was unusual, making a sharp left turn and then a 360-degree turn to the right as it descended into the sea. That's an unlikely track for a plane that had been bombed, but not so unlikely for a crew trying to descend to vent smoke from an onboard fire. Evidence was mounting that there was a fire on board.
